Let's see, a Soyuz booster around $30 million or so, mission control
specialist from Russia in the $10 million (???) range. I would be willing to
take a stab at designing the robotic sampler for around $5~10 million. This
could be a fairly standard telerobotic system hardened against vaccuum and
radiation.

This leaves the descent and ascent module along with recovery systems and
guidance system, which I have no clue on cost.

Is there anything I left out?

Terry

"Henry Spencer" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Terry Goodrich wrote:
...Assuming that the value
of the rocks would decrease in value as much as 90% due to the fact that
they would be on the open market, 20 kilo of rocks could be worth as much
as
500 million dollars. One should be able to build and launch a probe for
that much.

It's been suggested. Sample return is a fairly demanding mission, alas,
especially for significant quantities -- the old Russian return system
probably didn't bring back enough to break even, and anything else is a
moderately costly development project, which puts profitability in doubt.

There was even an early-70s proposal to commercially finance a final
Apollo mission, although it didn't get very far, at least partly because
NASA's reaction was total hostility.
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |